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Paul Krugman on interest rates and gold: “Mr. Magoo, you’ve done it again”
Once again, Paul Krugman manages to stumble Mr. Magoo-like to his analytical destination through a series of comical errors.
Krugman’s argument on gold and deflation is actually an argument on gold and depressions. Krugman begins by explaining that rising gold price has been popularly linked to the prospect of inflation created by the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve Bank. He has ignored this argument, because he thinks Fed policy is far too restrictive to create inflation — deflation is his worry. He has, in fact, brushed rising gold prices aside as something caused by gold-bugs and the like — until now.
Now, he thinks, he can explain why rising gold price may actually be an expected outcome of a deflation, not inflation. I know Krugman’s argument here is flawed, but coincidentally on the right side of the relation: rising gold price implies the economy is experiencing a depression but this real contraction of economic activity does not necessarily lead to a general fall of prices — the deflation Krugman thinks he can explain. So, I want to examine his argument to locate the fallacy in it.
In the model Krugman is using, gold is an ordinary commodity like oil or coal; i.e., without any significant monetary properties. Gold is used primarily for its industrial applications:
Imagine that there’s a fixed stock of gold available right now, and that over time this stock gradually disappears into real-world uses like dentistry. (Yes, gold gets mined, and there’s a more or less perpetual demand for gold that just sits there; never mind for now).
At this point, we need to make explicit what Krugman wants to dismiss in the set up of his argument: First, he is dismissing what is undeniably the most important use of gold: its use as money, as measure of value and as standard of prices. The use of gold as a way to store value — as gold “that just sits there” — does not consume the gold; it simply sits in a bank vault or some other storage facility and is rarely if ever moved, except to be transferred to the ownership of another person. What makes gold ideal for this is that it has a shelf-life that is unlimited — because it does not corrode or otherwise decompose. Even as standard of price gold does not necessarily get consumed. If it is used as currency it may be eroded during the course of circulation. But if it is not directly used as currency, this is not true — again, it simply sits in a bank vault until it is exchanged for paper tokens of itself.
Second, Krugman wants us to ignore the fact that the existing stock of gold is constantly being added to by production of new gold from sources deep in the earth. Most of this new gold also does not enter into production, but is used for its principal purpose as money — as a store of value (savings). Production of gold has to be important in any explanation because of a unique characteristic this gold production has: the production of gold does not appear to be significantly affected by the laws of supply and demand. While the price of gold may rise or fall, the amount of gold produced manages to remain in a very narrow band; rarely, if ever falling out of this narrow limit — e.g. between 2001 and 2010 production ranged between 2400 to 2650 tons per year, while prices quadrupled. As a commodity, gold behaves very curiously in a non-commodity fashion
These two objections are enough to raise serious questions about Paul’s entire model, but, for the moment, we will set them aside and continue to examine Paul’s argument:
The rate at which gold disappears into teeth — the flow demand for gold, in tons per year — depends on its real price
We have a fixed stock of gold that is gradually being consumed by various uses in production. Krugman argues that the rate this stock of gold is consumed will depend on its “real” price. What is the “real” price of gold, and how does this differ from the nominal currency price of gold? Krugman does not tell me. He simply throws the term out there and expects me to figure it out for myself. Since, I can only price gold in an existing currency, I assume by “real” price, Krugman means its currency, e.g. dollar, price. We will see why my assumption is not be correct — gold, it turns out, does not have a price, “real” or otherwise. For now, let’s continue:
Crucially, at least for tractability, there is a “choke price” — a price at which flow demand goes to zero. As we’ll see next, this price helps tie down the price path.
Krugman is arguing there is a price at which the “flow demand” (the money demand for a good over time) for gold in the market goes to zero. He slips this assumption into his argument without discussing it, but I am forced to wonder how he arrives at this statement. Certainly, for use as an ordinary commodity, as a commodity used in industrial processes, we can assume there is a point at which the price of gold might become prohibitive. But, as money — as store of value, or as the standard of prices — is there any evidence that gold has a price point at which demand for its goes to zero? Well, no and yes. One of the paradoxes of gold is that demand tends to increase along with the price. Here is just one example taken from a gold-bug (he even calls himself “Mr. Gold”) doing research on China’s demand for gold:
When at the beginning of this century I studied the elasticity of gold demand to incomes, I was stunned by how steep the demand curve was in China. PRC gold demand was unlike in any other country because, precisely, it was upward sloping – the more expensive the gold, the more the Chinese bought of it. The trend has not changed since then…
Note, how this gold-bug asserts the demand curve for gold is “unlike in any other country because, precisely, it was upward sloping.” This is hardly true, as we can see at least in the anecdotal evidence with demand for gold in the United States — the hysteria for gold increases as the price of the metal increases here as well. This pattern of behavior is not unusual if we assume gold is exhibiting the kind of money-like qualities associated with appreciating currencies. As a currency appreciates, demand for it increases. This suggests that price is driving demand, not vice-versa, that the demand curve for gold is upward sloping — which is to say, the higher the price rises, the greater the demand for gold. Moreover, there is no evidence of a price point, no matter how high, where the demand for gold goes to zero.
To argue this another way: In the real world, economists argue that deflation reduces the willingness of individuals to part with their money for commodities. They hold onto it as they anticipate even lower prices in the future. It is clear that gold is behaving in this fashion — as its price increases — which is to say, as its purchasing power increases — people want to hold onto it, and hold more of it. A hypothesis which does not account for this money-like behavior is not a hypothesis at all.
However, even if there is no price point where the demand for gold goes to zero, this does not mean there is no price point where “flow” goes to zero. If gold does indeed exhibit money-like qualities with an upward sloping ‘demand curve’, this would imply gold can fall to some price below which it no longer circulates as money. We can return to this point later as well.
Krugman now turns to the core question of his post:
So what determines the price of gold at any given point in time? Hotelling models say that people are willing to hold onto an exhaustible resources because they are rewarded with a rising price.
At this point we should say something about this “Hotelling model”. Harold Hotelling developed an economic model to describe how cartels act to restrain the supply of a commodity in the market in order to maximize profit, that is, the return on their investment in the production of the commodity. The Wikipedia has this to say about Hotelling’s Rule regarding scarcity rent — excess profit derived by creating scarcity in the supply of a product:
Hotelling’s rule defines the net price path as a function of time while maximising economic rent in the time of fully extracting a non-renewable natural resource. The maximum rent is also known as Hotelling rent or scarcity rent and is the maximum rent that could be obtained while emptying the stock resource. In an efficient exploitation of a non-renewable and non-augmentable resource, the percentage change in net-price per unit of time should equal the discount rate in order to maximise the present value of the resource capital over the extraction period.
Simply stated, if I have a commodity that will eventually be exhausted, I will manage its production so that, over the lifetime of its production, the amount of money I can charge for it will be maximized. Think about, for instance, OPEC, who wants to be sure they produce no more oil each year than is demanded by the market when the price of oil is the highest and the amount demand is the greatest.
The problem with applying this rule to a stock of gold is that, as we saw above, gold exhibits the characteristic features of a money, not of an ordinary commodity. This will seem to be a non sequitur to Krugman’s core argument — until you realize the aim of maximizing rent on the production of a commodity is to maximize the quantity of money one receives in return for that commodity. Essentially, Krugman is arguing that owners of a lifeless hoard of gold sitting in a vault seek to maximize rent on that lifeless hoard of gold sitting in a vault.
Since the gold never moves from the vault, never enters into circulation, never exchanges with other commodities, and, thereby, become the form of the profits sought by producers of commodities, its role in its own price appreciation or depreciation must be completely passive — it is a mere victim of circumstance, a bystander to events. Whatever the change in the price of gold that occurs must be the result of other processes in the economy that impose themselves on the price of gold, causing this price to vary over time.
So, whatever is happening with the price of gold is not the result of any change in the behavior of the owners of the commodity, nor of any rent maximizing effort on their part. In fact, from what we have seen above, there is no reason to assume the owners of gold do anything with this gold except hold onto it. The entire point of having the gold is to hold it irrespective of any change in its price. While there may be some fluctuations of willingness to hold gold at the margins — of interest in supplies of newly produced gold — the great bulk of gold is likely no more traded than do people trade their savings in any other form. The question raised by this is obvious:
What determines the preference of individuals to hold their savings in the form of gold as opposed to some other form? But, we will leave this to the side as well for now.
Krugman next states:
Abstracting from storage costs, this says that the real price [of gold] must rise at a rate equal to the real rate of interest.
As with the “real price” of gold, I am at a loss at to what the “real rate of interest” refers. So, I went looking for a definition of the term on Wikipedia and found this:
“The nominal interest rate is the amount, in money terms, of interest payable.
For example, suppose a household deposits $100 with a bank for 1 year and they receive interest of $10. At the end of the year their balance is $110. In this case, the nominal interest rate is 10% per annum.
The real interest rate, which measures the purchasing power of interest receipts, is calculated by adjusting the nominal rate charged to take inflation into account. (See real vs. nominal in economics.)
If inflation in the economy has been 10% in the year, then the $110 in the account at the end of the year buys the same amount as the $100 did a year ago. The real interest rate, in this case, is zero.”
Krugman is arguing that the price of gold will rise or fall to reflect interest rates once inflation has been stripped out of the equation. If the real interest rate is positive, gold will tend to appreciate relative to currency. If the real interest rate is negative, gold will tend to depreciate relative to currency. If, at the end of a year $100 in your savings account has increased to $110, and inflation that year is zero, an ounce of gold will appreciate by a proportional amount — say, from $1400 to $1540. If, at the end of a year $100 in your savings account has decreased to $90, and inflation that year is zero, an ounce of gold will depreciate by a proportional amount — say, from $1400 to $1260.
This latter example would likely cause some difficulties: you would go storming into your local bank branch to inquire why you were being charged an astonishing ten percent a year to keep your money in the bank. Once informed that the current interest rate charge by your bank was now -10% per year, you would promptly withdraw your funds — triggering what, in time, will grow into a run on the bank, as everyone withdraws their saving in the face of stiff new negative interest rates.
Why might this cause some difficulties? Between 1980 and 2001, the average annual price of gold fell on average by 5 percent per year; while, since 2001, the average annual price of gold has risen on average by 15 percent per year. The surprising result of Krugman’s argument is that, after accounting for inflation, real interest rates were negative for most of the 80s and 90s, but have been decidedly positive since then.
We will leave this for later examination as well.
Krugman concludes the recent jump in the price of gold is the result of the Federal Reserve Bank’s zero interest rate policy:
Now ask the question, what has changed recently that should affect this equilibrium path? And the answer is obvious: there has been a dramatic plunge in real interest rates, as investors have come to perceive that the Lesser Depression will depress returns on investment for a long time to come:
What effect should a lower real interest rate have on the Hotelling path? The answer is that it should get flatter: investors need less price appreciation to have an incentive to hold gold.
There are two things I question about this reasoning. First, the price of a troy ounce of gold has been increasing since 2001, when it hit bottom at an annual average price of $271. That means, for whatever reason having nothing to do with the Fed’s zero interest rate policy, investors have had an incentive to hold gold as its purchasing power, measured in dollars, has been rising for a decade now. Second, since in my argument, gold is playing only a passive role, the historical evidence suggests the Fed’s zero interest rate policy is being driven by the same forces that are also causing gold to appreciate in price and investors to hoard it.
Rather than driving events, the Fed’s zero interest rate policy is completely reactive. Simply stated, based on Krugman’s argument, the Fed’s zero interest rate policy is not sending capitals scurrying into gold and driving gold price higher, rather it is responding to whatever economic forces are doing this, and, driving real interest rates to an average 15% a year for the last decade — it is trying to drive real interest rates negative to reverse those forces, and to reverse the depressed return on investment.
We will show why this argument falls flat on its face as well
Says Krugman:
The logic, if you think about it, is pretty intuitive: with lower interest rates, it makes more sense to hoard gold now and push its actual use further into the future, which means higher prices in the short run and the near future.
The evidence is, in fact, the exact opposite: the behavior of gold indicates the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy is a failure so far (along with all the fiscal stimulus and backdoor bailouts) since, despite the effort and unprecedented scale of the various policy actions, the price of gold indicates interest rates remain stubbornly high at levels not seen since the 1970s depression. And, moreover, still increasing.
Nevertheless his string of errors in reasoning, Krugman manages to end up, Mr. Magoo-like, at what is somewhat close to the right conclusion:
…this is essentially a “real” story about gold, in which the price has risen because expected returns on other investments have fallen; it is not, repeat not, a story about inflation expectations. Not only are surging gold prices not a sign of severe inflation just around the corner, they’re actually the result of a persistently depressed economy stuck in a liquidity trap — an economy that basically faces the threat of Japanese-style deflation, not Weimar-style inflation. So people who bought gold because they believed that inflation was around the corner were right for the wrong reasons.
Krugman is correct to state rising gold price is a sign of an economy in a depression, where returns on investment have fallen flat. He is also correct to state gold is not signalling future inflation. But, Krugman arrives the correct conclusion only by making a series of Mr. Magoo-like blunders that just manage to offset each other — blunders, which, when stripped out of his argument, allow a simpler explanation for the relation between gold and real interest rates.
In the next part of this series, I will show why Krugman’s model, although arriving at something close to the truth of the matter, is nevertheless wholly wrong.
Inflation, the negative rate of profit, and the Fascist State (Part seven)
In part one of this series, I showed how inflation affects not only consumption but also production. In the former, inflation expresses itself in the fall of the consumption power of the mass of society. In the latter, inflation expresses itself as a fall in the actual realized rate of profit — a negative rate of profit arising not from a material change in the composition of capital, but from a depreciation in the purchasing power of money. The two of these effects are achieved by one and the same cause. The two effects do not simply exist side by side, but influence each other: in the circulation of capital, excess money-demand effectively reduces the portion of the output of productively employed capital that is realized in sales. With an inflation rate of ten percent, a capital with value of $100 now can be realized only if $110 is offered for it. On the other hand, a capital with the actual value of $110, is effectively purchased for $100.
The problem here is that between the production of the commodity and its realization in a sale the purchasing power of the money has depreciated. The problem can be better understood if we divide value and price and examine each separately. If we assume a capital with the value of $100, represents 10 hours of socially necessary labor time, we can make the following observation: The capitalist takes his capital with a value of $100 or ten hours of labor time and produces a quantity of commodities with a new total value of $110, representing 11 hours of socially necessary labor time. However, during this same period, the purchasing power of money has changed so that 1 hour of labor time no longer has a price of $10, but has a new price of $11. His capital now has the value of 11 hours of labor time with an implied expected price of $121 (11 times 11 = 121), yet he only realizes $110, or 10 hours of labor time under the new price conditions.
From the point of view of value, the capitalist has taken his capital with a value of 10 hours of socially necessary labor and produced a capital with a value of 11 hours of socially necessary labor. Yet, of this 11 hours of value he only realizes 10 hours, i.e., he realizes no more than his original investment. From the point of view of price, the capitalist has taken his capital with a money-price of $100 and produced a capital with a money-price of $110. He expects no more than $110 and is satisfied with this, despite the fact that this $110 in sales only has a value of 10 hours of socially necessary labor time.
The riddle of the divergence of prices from values
The riddle of this perverse situation can only be solved if we assume that a change occurred in the relationship between values and prices during the exchange of money and commodities — that the realization of the value of capital produced suffered from a defect such that a portion of the value this capital was lost in the act of exchange itself. This defect, as we showed in part three, is already inherent in the value/price mechanism itself. The value/price mechanism contains in itself a contradiction between the actual labor time expended on the production of a commodity and the socially necessary labor time required for its production; a contradiction between the value of the commodity itself and the expression of the value in the form of the price of the commodity; and, a contradiction between the price of the commodity denominated in units of the money and the socially necessary labor time required for the production of the object that serves as the money.
These contradictions exists only in latent form until crises bring them to the surface in a sudden divergence between prices and values of commodities. During periods of over-production of commodities — or, more accurately, over-accumulation of capital — these crises are expressed in the sudden collapse in the prices of commodities below their value, or socially necessary labor times. The divergence between prices and values of commodities only express the fact that for a more or less lengthy period of time wealth can no longer accumulate in its capitalistic form; and, as a result, the socially necessary labor time of society must contract to some point where the production of surplus value no longer takes place. Precisely because the circulation of capital requires not just the production of surplus value in the form of commodities, but also its realization in a separate act of sale of these commodities, the possibility exists for an interruption of the process of realization for a longer or shorter period of time until balance between production and consumption is restored — that is, until conditions exist for the total social capital to once again function as capital; for the process of self-expansion of the total social capital to resume.
If, for whatever reason, conditions are not established for the total social capital to resume functioning as capital — for the process of self-expansion of the total social capital to begin again — production itself must cease. The interruption of exchange — which, I note for the record, begins not with too much money-demand for too few commodities, but precisely the reverse — creates a sudden fall in the rate of profit to zero. If this occurs not as an intermittent breakdown, but as a permanent feature of capitalist production — which is to say, if the over-accumulation of capital is not momentary, but a now permanent feature of the mode of production — capital has encountered its absolute limit as a mode of production. From this point forward the production of wealth can no longer take its capitalistic form — can no longer take the form of surplus value and of profit.
Over-accumulation of capital and civil society
Moreover, since the production of surplus value is the absolute condition for the purchase and sale of labor power, the sudden interruption of its production affects not just the capitalist class, but the class of laborers as well — it appears in the form of a social catastrophe threatening the existence of the whole of existing society, and all the classes composing existing society without regard to their respective place in the social division of labor. Each member of society encounters the exact same circumstance: she cannot sell her commodity, whether this commodity is an ordinary one — shoes, groceries, etc. — or the quintessential capitalist commodity, labor power. The premise of all productive activity in society is that this activity can only be undertaken if it yields a profit; if, in other words, the existing socially necessary labor time expended by society realizes, in addition to this value, additional socially necessary labor time above that consumed during its production.
Marx argues in Capital Volume 3 that capitalist production presupposes a tendency toward the absolute development of the productive forces of society, irrespective of the consequences implied by this development for capital itself. What does Marx mean by this? As a mode of production, capital shares with all previous modes of production the feature of being founded on natural scarcity, on the insufficiency of means to satisfy human need. Yet, at the same time, it implies a tendency for the productive capacity of society to develop more rapidly than consumption power of society — a tendency for more commodities to be thrown on the market at any given time than society can consume under the given conditions of exchange. What society can consume at any given moment is not determined simply by the amount of commodities available to be consumed, but by class conflict between the mass of owners of capital and the mass of laborers; a conflict which presupposes the reduction of the consumption power of the mass of laborers to some definite limit consistent with the realization of profits.
That this conflict, absent a successful attempt on the part of the mass of society to end the monopoly over the means of production by an insignificant handful of predators, must be settled in favor of capital and, therefore, that production is constantly kneecapped by completely artificial limits on consumption, is already given by capitalist relations of production themselves — relations which nowhere figure in the description of capital by simple-minded economists, who instead ascribe this barrier to the gold standard, etc.
This contradiction — that the productive power of society tends toward its absolute development, yet the consumption power is constantly constrained by the need to produce commodities at a profit — implies that at a certain point in capital’s development production and consumption come into absolute conflict — a conflict which, on the one hand, cannot be resolved by simply increasing this productive power still further, nor by limiting consumption still more severely. It can only be overcome by such means as overthrow capitalist relations entirely, or, alternately, destroy both the productive and consumption power of society together in one and the same act of exchange.
Exchange and disaccumulation, or, the destruction of value through exchange
I have made the assumption that both the productive power of society and the consumption power of society are destroyed by one and the same act of exchange. Based on this assertion, I define inflation not simply as the increase in money-demand over the supply of commodities, but the actual destruction of the productive power of society and consumption power of society during the act of exchange. Or, what is the same thing, by the progressive reduction of the total social capital circulating within society, i.e., the reduction of the quantity of the existing total social capital which continues to function as capital within society, through exchange.
I have also made the assumption that this same act of exchange also expresses,
- the contradiction between the actual labor time expended on production of commodities and the socially necessary labor time required for production of these commodities — inflation, therefore, expresses itself as a declining portion of the total labor time expended by society that is socially necessary, or, alternately, the constant increase in the total labor time of society in relation to the social necessity for productively expended labor time;
- the contradiction between values of commodities and the expression of these values in the prices of commodities — inflation, therefore, is expressed as a decline in the value of commodities as a proportion of the prices of commodities, or, alternately, the constant increase in the prices of commodities in relation to their values; and,
- the contradiction between the prices of commodities denominated in units of the legally defined money and the price of the commodity that historically served as the money — inflation, therefore, is expressed in the constant depreciation of the exchange ratio of the money token against the commodity historically serving as the standard of price, or, alternately, as the rising price of the commodity historically serving as the standard of prices denominated in the money token, i.e., a secular rise in the price of gold.*
The conditions of this act of exchange, which destroys both the productive power of society and its consumption power — and which, on this basis, progressively reduces the quantity of the existing total social capital which continues to circulates as capital and function as capital on this basis — is fulfilled only by exchange of that portion of the newly created social capital representing surplus value with ex nihilo money, and the unproductive consumption of this newly created value by the Fascist State. Moreover, this unproductive consumption of the newly created surplus value is only fulfilled if it is entirely unproductive in all of its forms, i.e., whether this unproductive consumption takes the form of the unproductive consumption of commodities, of labor power, or, of the fixed and circulating capital.
Fascist State expenditures consist entirely of removing the surplus product of labor from circulation, consuming it unproductively, and replacing this surplus product in circulation with a valueless ex nihilo money that formally completes the act of exchange, but that in reality abrogates it. The total mass of capital circulating within society is thereby reduced by this exchange, while the total money-demand in society is simultaneously increased.
The chief symptoms of inflation, therefore, is (1.) the unproductive consumption of the existing total capital by the Fascist State, no matter what form this unproductive consumption takes; (2.) the constant secular increase in Fascist State expenditures, no matter how these expenditures are financed, but which is no more than the continuous exchange of every form of commodity (i.e., of capital in the form of commodities) for newly created valueless ex nihilo money; and, finally, (3.) the constant expansion of the total labor time of society beyond that duration required by the satisfaction of human needs. In tandem with the improvement in the productivity of labor, society is compelled to expend an ever greater amount of effort just to feed, house and clothe itself. In tandem with the reduction in the value of commodities, the prices of commodities soar still higher. In tandem with relentless expansion of Fascist State expenditures, the actual provision of necessary public services — education, health care, provision for the disabled and those no longer able to work, public infrastructure and communications — sink into decay and obsolescence.
The terminal trajectory of capitalist social relations is expressed precisely in the fact that at a certain stage of development the total social capital can no longer function as capital, can no longer realize the constantly increasing quantity of surplus value produced in the form of profits, that, to the contrary, this surplus value must be unproductively consumed in its entirety by the Fascist State and replaced by purely fictitious profits denominated in a purely fictitious money.
*****
*NOTE: I need clarify from Part Three that this third contradiction implies gold tends to exchange with other commodities at some exchange ratio below its relative value, despite its rising nominal price. As is obvious, if commodities are priced above their values, the purchasing power of gold — the physical body of exchange value — is exchanged below its value. This situation, which once occurred only during periods of general capitalist expansion, is now a permanent feature of exchange. It is, however, expressed through the intermediary of the money token by commodities being priced above their values, while gold is priced below its value. An existing quantity of money token can buy fewer commodities, but more gold, than otherwise expected. This inevitably leads to charges by gold-bugs that the price of gold is being deliberately suppressed, but I think it is actually a natural consequence of over-accumulation of capital — a condition normally seen at the apex of an expansion. Commodities in general are devalued, but this devaluation is expressed most thoroughly in the devaluation of the former money commodity which serves little other function in society but to express value.
Inflation, the negative rate of profit, and the Fascist State (Part six)
I need to digress for a moment to set everything I have discussed so far regarding inflation in the context of the world market. As will become clear, it is difficult, if not impossible to discuss inflation without taking into account the relation between the two. Inflation, as I have argued, can be understood as the chronic secular rise of prices for commodities, yet, it can also be understood as the chronic fall in the general level of consumption in an economy over a period of time. These two expressions of inflation do not simply exist as poles of a definition of inflation, but first and foremost as poles of the actually existing relation of production within the world market — a chronic, secular rise in prices of commodities on the one hand, and a chronic fall in the general level of consumption — of wages — on the other.
Inflation and the faux political battle over Austerity
One way to begin this is to look at the current faux political struggle unfolding in Washington over deficit spending by the Fascist State, since this faux struggle touches on one of the most glaring expressions of the imbalances within the world market. So, let’s examine the argument of the advocates of Austerity from the standpoint of Marx’s labor theory of value:
According to these sober persons, the United States must pay its debts. Since it must pay its debts — for instance, the US owes China $3 trillion — it must contain spending to a level consistent with this goal. Of course, the statement that the United States owes China $3 trillion is a non-sequitur in relation to domestic spending and taxes, since the US doesn’t pay China with revenues raised through taxes. It creates the money out of nothing. If China is concerned about getting its money, a faceless bureaucrat at the Treasury simply goes to a computer terminal and enters a 3 followed by 12 zeroes into an account designated by China. Now the PRC has its $3 trillion and we need not talk about Austerity. They get what we promised them: $3 trillion, and nothing more.
As the economist advocates of Modern Monetary Theory argue, this process is no different than what occurs when you withdraw cash from your savings account at the bank or transfer cash from your savings account to your checking account. US treasuries are simply China’s own savings account.
Now, what does China do with the $3 trillion? They have absolutely no domestic use for it, since the yuan serves as the domestic currency, not dollars. The PRC could use the money to import wage commodities to raise the material standard. But if they had any intention of doing this, the $3 trillion would not have been loaned to the United States in the first place. The PRC could also use the money to import capital commodities to increase the rate of domestic economic growth. However, even if they used the money this way. it would only result in more exports and even greater trade surpluses denominated in dollars. We have to assume that China has absolutely no use for the dollars — that the dollars are excess capital, which, since the PRC has no use for it, ends up being lent to the United States. And, since the United States can create as many dollars as they want, they have no use for it either.
The $3 trillion is valueless. And, if it is valueless, this implies all the crap they sold us is valueless as well. China sold us all this crap knowing we were giving them valueless dollars in return. We must assume they exchanged these commodities for American ex nihilo dollars because it couldn’t be sold otherwise. Since the crap was valueless unless they sold it to us for equally valueless dollars, the terms of the trade were met. Crap for crap; superfluous commodities, which, therefore, are not commodities at all, since they have no value, exchanged for a quantity of ex nihilo money that also has no value.
But, by the same token, the savings from austerity sought by the Austerians to repay China must also be valueless, since it consists entirely of these same ex nihilo dollars. Which implies that current expenditures by the Fascist State are also valueless, since the money spent domestically is the same as that to be paid to China. The money isn’t valueless because we owe it to China, it was valueless already — just as China’s crap is valueless unless it is sold. Whether it is used to repay China or spent on National Health Care, the money is completely valueless. Which means, not only is all that crap in China valueless, national health care is valueless as well. You cannot buy something with nothing unless that something is also nothing, i.e., has the same value as your means of purchasing it.
On the other hand, health care is definitely something, but so are socks made in China and sold at WalMart. By saying a thing exchanged for nothing must be nothing as well clearly has nothing to do with whether it is useful or necessary. The socks are useful, and so is an annual checkup. But, when exchanged for valueless dollars, they must also be valueless. It is not a question of whether these valueless dollars will go to pay China or to pay for health care.
The real question is why all of these useful goods continue to circulate in the form of commodities despite the valuelessness of the money? If we removed the valueless money from the equation entirely and allowed the goods to move as society demanded, nothing will have changed. Which is to say, if the goods were free, from the standpoint of value, nothing has changed. The fact that money serves as an intermediary in exchange here has no impact on the value of the things. Rather money is announcing, “These things for which I am exchanged have no value themselves. They, like me, are valueless in an economic sense, and, therefore, are no longer actually commodities.”
The absurdity of ex nihilo money
The absurdity is apparent: Money in this case only expresses that, from the standpoint of the law of value, there is no need for money. But this monetary expression takes the form of a valueless money. The sheer stupidity that money expresses its own superfluousness is already given in ex nihilo money. At the same time, this absurdity can only arise because, as a practical matter, the superfluousness of money appears absurd itself. Or, what is the same thing, a society founded on exchange of commodities has nevertheless come to be dominated by directly social production. This directly social production, for which exchange of commodities is entirely absurd, must nonetheless appear in the form of exchange – fictitious exchange. To accomplish this fictitious exchange requires a money form that is itself fictitious — ex nihilo money.
Although the exchanges taking place are fictitious, and use a currency that is entirely fictitious, the need for these fictions are real. The premise of all these fictions is that completely social conditions of production are nevertheless split up among the members of society. On the one hand, this division presupposes exchange of commodities, yet, on the other hand, this commodity exchange is entirely superfluous to the production of these commodities. The conflict between the conditions governing exchange and those governing production must be resolved; and they are, by fictions. But this “resolution” of the conflict between the conditions of exchange and the conditions of production can only intensify the antagonism between the two, and develop it to its most extreme limit.
Every nation attempts to resolve the conflict between the conditions of production and the conditions of exchange by issuing its own ex nihilo money. However, the limit of any nation to issue ex nihilo money rests on its ability to export more than it imports. According to Paul Krugman (2010) a nation can issue ex nihilo money only if it can run an export surplus and accepts a depreciation of its money. Moreover, in a flexible exchange rate system the export surplus becomes possible because issuing the ex nihilo money itself creates a tendency toward this depreciation of its currency. Thus, in a flexible exchange rate system, creating money ex nihilo produces a tendency toward export surpluses by depreciating the purchasing power of the ex nihilo money. The creation of fictitious money depresses the ability of the community to consume what it produces; it reduces the ratio of domestic consumption to domestic production — increased export is realized through the relative impoverishment of the community.
Since, in Krugman’s 2010 model every nation seeks a trade surplus by impoverishing itself — i.e., by reducing the portion of domestic production that is consumed domestically — who is consuming all of this now excess crap? Krugman’s 2010 model implies either the existence of a designated importer nation, or, the planet ends up with massive quantities of unsold excess commodities. What role does this designated importer play? If every other nation is running a trade surplus, the designated importer must run a trade deficit equal to the total surplus commodities produced by all the other nations. i.e., equal to the sum of excess capital in the form of excess commodities.
If the designated importer nation is running a chronic and growing export deficit, how does it pay for these imports? This designated importer has a fictitious currency every other nation must accumulate as payment for its exports. By law, only the State can create ex nihilo money. The responsibility of creating sufficient quantities of fictional money falls to it. The creation of ex nihilo money, however, is nothing more than the creation of fictitious profits — to the penny. If this creation is accomplished by issuing public debt, this public debt amounts to the fictional profits of private capitals. By increasing the public debt the owner of the world reserve currency can print money and buy all the crap. On the other hand, there is a tendency for the excess capital of the world market to be denominated in the world reserve currency.
However, since we are dealing with an actual material conflict between the conditions of production and the conditions of exchange under condition of absolute over-accumulation of capital, this conflict doesn’t disappear. It now appears as poles of international trade in the form of many net exporters on one side, who are accumulating fictitious dollar assets, and a net importer on the other side, who is accumulating a growing public debt; thus, the excess capital of the world market is increasingly denominated in the world reserve currency. This division of the world market into many net exporters and a single net importer has consequences for ex nihilo money creation itself: The capacity to grow export surpluses by creating ex nihilo money does indeed increase, but this increased capacity is only true for the designated importer nation. The export surplus nations actually end up with less capacity to create ex nihilo money, even as the designated importer nation gains in this capacity. Eventually, the export surplus nations must absolutely constrict their respective money supplies to contain inflation — producing, as a consequence, a growing surplus population of starving laborers. Although this conclusion is obvious, Krugman has not a hint of it in his 2010 paper.
Ex nihilo money, labor time, and the World Market
The problem is that directly social production abolishes the law of value, while exchange takes place only on the basis of this law. Under the capitalist mode of production, production is only undertaken with the eye to profit, i.e., to realization of surplus value. Yet, under conditions of absolute over-accumulation of capital, no additional surplus value can be realized, i.e., the profit rate is zero, if not negative. If the fiction of profits could not be maintained, production would cease entirely. To maintain this fiction, you need fictitious money.
To put this another way, under conditions of over-accumulation, directly social production limits the total labor time of the community to socially necessary labor time. And, what is the measure of this socially necessary labor time? Here is the somewhat surprising answer:
Socially Necessary Labor Time = Value = Wages.
Under conditions of over-accumulation of capital, the absolute limit of total socially necessary labor time is the value of the wages of the working class. Any value created in addition to this necessary limit — i.e., surplus value — cannot be realized as profit — it is wasted (or, superfluous) labor time. Profits realized under this regime must, by definition, be fictitious; hence the fiction of ex nihilo money.
If the production of surplus value no longer takes place, profit can be “realized” through exchange only on condition there is a continuous and pervasive unequal exchange of values within the world market. If labor power cannot be exploited to create surplus value, it must be constantly and artificially devalued — that is, purchased at a price below its actual value. This artificial (purely monetary) devaluation of labor power is a natural consequence of Fascist State ex nihilo money expenditures. This purely monetary devaluation of labor power goes hand in hand with a purely monetary devaluation of the fixed and circulating constant capital.
However, although labor power and the fixed and circulating constant capital are artificially devalued, this does not, by any means, imply a fall in the prices of these commodities — rather the situation is precisely the reverse. Under the conditions I am describing, the purely monetary devaluation is expressed inversely as rising ex nihilo prices for these commodities. They become dearer in ex nihilo money terms as their prices are held well over their actual values; in turn, society is compelled by generally rising prices denominated in the world reserve currency to consume fewer of these commodities.
However, it should not be understood by this that generally rising prices cause declining consumption of commodities; nor, does this imply that either or both result from the huge quantities of ex nihilo money created by the state. Rather, each of these is called forth by the growing conflict between the conditions of production and the conditions of exchange under circumstance of chronic or absolute over-accumulation of capital. Over-accumulation of capital means precisely over-accumulation of commodities — of fixed and circulating constant capital, and, of variable capital, i.e., labor power. Moreover, we have to assume that this over-accumulation of capital exists not simply in one or a few nations, but universally throughout the world market. Hence, export of capital no longer serves to resolve the contradictions inherent to capital.
Those who are following my reasoning so far immediately recognize the logical contradiction in the above paragraphs: I have made the absurd assumption that commodities sell at prices below their values and, simultaneously, above their values. On the surface, it would appear that these two paradoxical assumptions could not exist, or, if they did exist, would bring social production to a halt entirely. As a practical matter, however, these two assumptions, although occurring side by side during the circulation of commodities, nevertheless only occur serially in any given example and in two different directions: the capitalist purchases labor power where the average wage is priced below its value, and sells wage commodities where prices of these commodities are above their values. Which is to say, the world reserve currency, despite massive ex nihilo creation that should force its exchange rate against other currencies down precipitously, actually exchanges against these other currencies at a higher rate than would otherwise be expected — it enjoys what economists refer to as an “exorbitant privilege”.
As a result, there is a tendency for production to move toward the least developed regions of the world market, where labor power can be purchased for a fraction of its value, while the resultant output is sold in the most developed consumer markets. Capital denominated in the world reserve currency, since this currency can be exchanged for any local currency, can simultaneously purchase labor power in those places where wages are below their values, and sell the produced commodities in those places where prices are above their values. Productive employment of capital in the home market of the world reserve currency holder grows increasingly unprofitable and commodities produced there suffer from uncompetitive world market prices. Capital, therefore, takes flight to the less developed regions of the world market. This event is accompanied by loud public pronouncements by politicians and the business community on the liberating effects of free trade; and by angry denunciations on the part of those capitals who, because of their size or circumstances, cannot shift their capital to take advantage of this process and are driven to ruin or speculation.
This has implications for the development of the world market, which, rather than slowing because of the general over-accumulation of capital within the world market, now increases at an astonishing rate and geometrically: Capital denominated in the world reserve currency can not only take advantage of the price disequilibrium between labor power and wage goods, it can further exploit the “exorbitant privilege” of the world reserve currency. This must accelerate the export of capital to less developed regions of the world market to take advantage of extremely favorable terms on which labor power can be exploited in the local currency, and, simultaneously, lead to the expansion of the portion of the total social capital denominated in dollars at the expense of the portion denominated in other currencies.
The problem I spoke of in an earlier post in this series — that wages are too high, and yet too low — resolves itself naturally into accelerated export of productively employed capital to those places where labor power can be had for a fraction of its value, to produce goods destined for markets where commodities are priced many times their actual value. This arbitrage, which can only continue so long as new sources of ever cheaper labor power can be found, must be expressed in a growing volume of Fascist State ex nihilo money creation, which, moreover, must not simply increase, but increase geometrically.
Inflation, the negative rate of profit, and the Fascist State (Part five)
According to the Wikipedia entry on Executive Order 6102, the fine for hoarding gold was ten thousand dollars. At the same time, the executive order demanded all private holdings be turned in and exchanged for government issued ex nihilo dollars at an exchange rate of $20.67 per troy ounce of gold. Using this as our base measure, the fine for hoarding gold amounted to 483.79 troy ounces of gold.
So, like the authors of the Wikipedia entry I tried to update the purchasing power of the 1933 ten thousand dollar fine into an amount of money equal to it in 2011 dollars. I went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index website and found that according to its statistical measure of inflation it now takes $171,897.69 to purchase the same quantity of goods that the ten thousand dollar fine would have purchased in 1933. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the purchasing power of the ten thousand dollar fine has fallen to just 5.82 percent of its purchasing power in 1933. This is a fantastic depreciation in the purchasing power of dollars. However, it is also a gross lie — the depreciation of dollars has been far more severe than even the BLS admits, as we will now show.
The Problem of the Consumer Price Index
The Consumer Price index has been the subject of continuing controversy, including charges that it overestimates inflation and charges that it underestimates inflation. But, this controversy does not concern us here, since it is, in part at least, a political disagreement. What does concern us is the index itself, which popularly purports to measure the depreciating purchasing power of money in relation not to a fixed standard, but against a multitude of standards — that is, against a so-called basket of consumer goods.
Upon deeper investigation, however, I found, according to the entry in the Wikipedia on the United States Consumer Price Index, that the CPI was never meant to measure inflation or the depreciating purchasing power of money:
The U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a time series measure of the price level of consumer goods and services. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which started the statistic in 1919, publishes the CPI on a monthly basis. The CPI is calculated by observing price changes among a wide array of products in urban areas and weighing these price changes by the share of income consumers spend purchasing them. The resulting statistic, measured as of the end of the month for which it is published, serves as one of the most popular measures of United States inflation; however, the CPI focuses on approximating a cost-of-living index not a general price index.
Intrigued by this disclaimer, I went searching for the difference between a measure of inflation and a measure of the “cost of living”. Among the information I found was an admission by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that the Consumer Price Index not only does not measure inflation, but it is not even a true measure of the cost of living. It is limited to measuring market purchases by consumers of a basket of goods and services.
According to Wikipedia, the BLS states:
The CPI frequently is called a cost-of-living index, but it differs in important ways from a complete cost-of-living measure. BLS has for some time used a cost-of-living framework in making practical decisions about questions that arise in constructing the CPI. A cost-of-living index is a conceptual measurement goal, however, not a straightforward alternative to the CPI. A cost-of-living index would measure changes over time in the amount that consumers need to spend to reach a certain utility level or standard of living. Both the CPI and a cost-of-living index would reflect changes in the prices of goods and services, such as food and clothing that are directly purchased in the marketplace; but a complete cost-of-living index would go beyond this to also take into account changes in other governmental or environmental factors that affect consumers’ well-being. It is very difficult to determine the proper treatment of public goods, such as safety and education, and other broad concerns, such as health, water quality, and crime that would constitute a complete cost-of-living framework.
Since, the BLS, by its own admission, incompletely measures the amount you must spend to achieve a presumed certain level of “utility” — the so-called Standard of Living — how do they define this “utility”? Further reading explains:
Utility is not directly measurable, so the true cost of living index only serves as a theoretical ideal, not a practical price index formula.
So, to sum up: the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index is a measure of a theoretical construct which cannot be defined, is difficult to determine, and, in any case, is not directly measurable: the so-called “Standard of Living“.
The hidden costs borne by society
If we go back to the first paragraph of the original definition of inflation proposed the the Wikipedia entry, we find this:
In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a loss of real value in the internal medium of exchange and unit of account in the economy.[my emphasis] A chief measure of price inflation is the inflation rate, the annualized percentage change in a general price index (normally the Consumer Price Index) over time.
Inflation is defined as the general rise in prices of goods and services, but also as the erosion of the purchasing power of money — i.e., the depreciation of money. Against what is this erosion of purchasing power to be measured? Here, the Wikipedia is silent, leaving us with the wrong idea that the “real value” of money is to be measured against the commodities we can purchase with it. As this “real value” erodes, we can purchase fewer goods and services. This implied method of measuring the depreciation of money, however, does not give us a general measure of the price level, as the BLS admits, but only a measure of the price level as expressed in a series of transactions in the market for so many individual commodities.
The war in Afghanistan, for instance, would not be captured by this implied method; nor, would the cost incurred by society as a result of the damage British Petroleum caused to the Gulf of Mexico; nor, the cost borne by society for the Fukushima nuclear disaster, or that created by the bailout of the failed banksters on Wall Street. Unless these costs actually entered into the prices of commodities in market transactions, they will not show up in the Consumer Price Index. And, a considerable period of time could pass between the events and their expression in the prices of commodities tracked by the Consumer Price Index. Moreover, the change in prices of the commodities tracked by the Consumer Prices Index are subject to innumerable factors arising from market forces within the World Market — making it impossible to trace any specific fluctuation back to its source. On the other hand, each of the events of the sort cited above materially affected either the necessary labor time of society or the quantity of ex nihilo money in circulation within the economy.
The question to which we seek an answer is not how much the purchasing power of ex nihilo money has depreciated with respect to some arbitrarily established concept of living ltandard, but how much it has diverged from the purchasing power of gold standard money? To answer this question, we must directly measure these changes by comparing the general prices level against the commodity that served as the standard for prices until money was debased and replaced with ex nihilo dollars.
Gold standard dollars more or less held prices to the necessary social labor time required for the production of commodities; the divergence between gold and dollars since the dollar was debased, provides us with an unambiguous picture of inflation since 1933. The divergence between the former gold standard money and ex nihilo money must be expressed as the depreciation of ex nihilo money purchasing power for an ounce of gold over time , or, what is the same thing, as the inverse of the price of gold over a period of time — as is shown in the chart below for the years 1920 to 2010.
Inflation since 1933 has been four times higher than BLS figures show
So, how does all of this relate back to the fine imposed on anyone found guilty of hoarding gold under Executive Order 6120? Remember, in 1933 the ten thousand dollar fine could have been exchanged for 483.79 ounces of gold. According to the BLS Consumer Price Index this translates into $171,897.69 in current dollars. However, 483.79 troy ounces of gold actually commands the far greater sum of $714,441.22, or 4 times as many dollars as the BLS Consumer Price Index states.
To put this another way, the Consumer Price Index is a complete fabrication by government to deliberately understate the actual depreciation of dollar purchasing power. The cumulative results of decades of false inflation statistics can be seen by simply comparing CPI statistics to the actual depreciation of dollar purchasing power against its former standard, gold. The extent of this fabrication can be seen in the chart below:
Moreover, for 2010, the annual average price inflation rate was a quite staggering 26%, when measured against the value of gold, not the paltry 1.6% alleged by the BLS.
If you didn’t receive a 26 percent increase in your wages or salary in 2010, you experienced a 26% loss in purchasing power — your consumption power was systematically destroyed by Washington money printing.
Using gold as the standard against which the depreciation of ex nihilo money is measured demonstrates how the Fascist State deliberately manipulates statistics for its own purposes to hide from the public the extent to which it manipulates exchange, and, therefore, the extent to which this manipulation has resulted in greatly increased prices for commodities.
But, gold does not only allow us to actually visualize the extent of this manipulation, as we shall show in the next post, gold also can demonstrate how this manipulation results in the needless extension of social working time beyond its necessary limit. That the Fascist State relentlessly extends working time beyond this limit, or, more importantly, that operates to maintain an environment of scarcity within society, which is the absolute precondition for Capital’s continuation.
To be continued